Left Shark
You know what’s a pretty big deal? The Superbowl. You
know what is also a pretty big deal? Katy Perry. Well, your mileage may vary on
that, but, still, playing the halftime show at the most-watched event each year
is a highlight of anyone’s career. So when Perry put on a hell of a show that
featured various beach-themed elements, it was well-received…especially a
dancing shark, who was clearly out of his or her depth, flailing around like a
fish out of…out of something while the opposing right shark parades around
flawlessly.
Ariana Grande
This year’s hot new star, the very young and talented
Ariana Grande made quite a few enemies when she was captured on video at a
donut shop doing two very unfortunate things: claiming she hated America
(apparently based on the metric of donut consumption), and then licking donuts
intended for other customers. Aside from the hygienic of the situation, talking
trash about your potential customer base can be career-destroying (please see:
Chicks, Dixie).
Taylor Swift/Nicki Minaj Feud
Ain’t no feud like a twitter feud, because a twitter feud
is an obnoxious waste of time. Two very popular singers, Taylor Swift and Nicki
Minaj, got into a relatively minor argument about the MTV Video Music Award
nominees, where Minaj made increasingly specific jabs at Swift getting
nominated instead of her, and when Swift took the bait Minaj claimed innocence.
This eventually spread to a host of other nominees and celebrities with their
two cents, which on the surface was fairly good-natured but still drug up
issues of race, image, and sexism. Thankfully, just like anything that has even
happened on twitter, none of it mattered to a whole lot.
Adam Sandler's Career
Adam Sandler hasn’t had a great year. Well, he hasn’t had
a great decade, industry-wise. His movies haven’t fared particularly well
lately (although they tend to still make money), but this year’s Pixels was
particularly galling; it was seen as an inventive different take on what
Sandler usually does (although, as it turns out, not that much different)and
still bombed. More telling, several Native Americans walked off the set of a
film currently being shot because of disrespectful jokes concerning Native
Americans, the actors apparently not having ever seen an Adam Sandler movie
before.
Bill Cosby
One of entertainment’s most iconic performers, Bill
Cosby—who ushered in an integrated television show (I Spy), revived the sitcom
(The Cosby Show) and proved that unorthodox educational methods, race, and
mainstream America could get along quite nicely. Of course, if they hadn’t gotten
along quite nicely, Cosby would have finished the job with a glass full of
roofies and sexual assault. While the charges are—as always—alleged, the number
and volume of accusations reached a point where they could not be effectively
ignored.
Stephen Rannazzisi
Comedian
Stephen Rannazzisi, known primarily for his role in the basic cable
fantasy-football themed sitcom The League and nothing
else, has long contended that his backstory (and, in no small part, a reason
for his initial success) included being in the Twin Towers on 9/11. Fast
forward over ten years later, and when reporters sussed out that the story was
highly likely to be untrue (he claimed to work for Merril Lynch, which had no
offices in the building) he confessed to making the whole thing up. With The League all
but wrapped up for filming, the only immediate consequences was losing out on a
sweet advertising campaign for Buffalo Wild Wings. Actions have consequences,
and those consequences sometimes means not being paid in spicy chicken wings.
Donald
Trump
Where to
start with who is, as of the time of this writing, the frontrunner for the
nomination to the Presidency by a major political party in America? Maybe we
can stop at his announcement speech, where he threw Mexicans under the bus, or
maybe we can stop at him calling out John McCain because he was captured
or maybe we can stop at him giving out rival Lindsey Graham’s home phone
number, or inferring that Megyn Kelly was menstruating when moderating a GOP
debate. And that’s just up through August!
Kim
Davis
After the
Supreme Court declared that gay marriage was legal in all 50 states, some
individuals, it should be said, did not agree. Most people relegated their
frustrations via poorly-thought out Facebook status updates or reserved anger
until Thanksgiving dinner with distant relatives. But Kim Davis is nothing if
not an overachiever; she extended her outrage into not performing the duties of
her job, which, as the county clerk of Rowan County, Kentucky, is to, in part,
issue marriage licenses. In refusing to issue same-sex documents (but also not
resigning her post), she started a firestorm of protest across the nation.
Walter
Palmer
Big-game
enthusiast and (apparently) highly lucrative dentist Walter Palmer decided to
travel to Africa to bag him a lion. What Palmer didn't know--or chose not to
find out--is that Zimbabwe is a soulless mass of corruption and sleaze, and
relying to "local guides" to help him snag his trophy probably was a
bad idea. So when he bagged the famed lion, a beloved tourist attraction in the
fields of Africa, the international outrage was swift and loud, and conservationists
took a long hard look in the mirror. And the world wrote poems and sang sad
songs about...wait, what was the lion's name again? We all knew it this past
summer like he was our best friend, right?
Rachel Dolezal
California Drought
For years, California was seen as the paradise of America—it’s where all the
rich and glamorous people live. Even the industry is glamorous, being a major
producer of wine and pistachios. This all came to an end, however, as a
massive, months-long drought hit the Golden State. After the water tables were
depleted and the poor people curtailed their usage, the major farms who decided
to grow crops next to a desert suddenly found themselves in hot—well, not
water, I guess. Crop insurance will make sure most of them will stay in
business to cause this to happen again in a few years, so it looks like it all
worked itself out. Well, when it starts to rain again.
Runaway Blimp
There was a modest amount of slow-moving and extremely avoidable danger late
this year when the military lost control of a blimp. That’s right—a blimp. No,
this isn’t the Miserable Crank Awards from 1906. The blimp—apparently used to
detect missile attacks, which is not a joke—became untethered, dragging a
mile-long length of cable and causing property damage, knocking out power, and
forcing the delays of airline trips. If ISIS has penetrated the US to the point
where missile attacks are likely in the panhandle of Maryland and central
Pennsylvania, we’re in big trouble.
Starbucks Cup
Poor Starbucks. The ubiquitous coffee chain that shows up on every street
corner (literally) has tried, in recent times, to make some waves. They bombed
earlier in the year by encouraging patrons to engage in a dialogue about
race—because the one thing people want when they’re picking up their coffee is
not convenience or price but to slow everything down and discussing a highly
contentious issue that has nothing to do with serving ground up beans. After
that fiasco, they decided to play it safe with unadorned Christmas
cups—igniting the ire of (an admittedly extremely small) number of Christian
groups who felt they were erasing the holiday—er, I specifically mean
Christmas.
Twitter's Like Icon
The highly popular social media application Twitter—tailor-made for quick
access and even quicker consumption—has long been able to remain popular due to
the ease of sharing and promoting content. So imagine everyone’s surprise when
the historically pleasing “like” option, where one simply taps on a tweet to
signify approval without actually having to rely on human-to-human interaction,
went from the familiar star to the more awkward heart. Not a big deal to most,
one assumes, but stars are universal—no, literally, they are what make up the
universe. Hew3arts, on the other hand, carry certain connotations that people
go to twitter to specifically avoid.
Clickbait
Clickbait—the obnoxious attention-grabbing articles with sensationalistic
headlines that compel people to read an internet article—have been around for a
while; hell, they’ve been around since the first internet opened up in, like,
1980 or whatever. But it’s been honed down to a craft at this point, with ad
revenue being maximized via things like slideshows and link farms, and the ease
in which these articles can be shared in social media, especially Facebook,
acts as a force multiplier. Sites such as Buzzfeed have grown exponentially
this year because of tactics like these, so it appears as though we’re stuck
with it for CLICK HERE TO CONTINUE ON. YOU WON’T BELIEVE WHAT COMES NEXT![Voting is now closed.]
No comments:
Post a Comment